The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat 1974

In the 1970s, Fritz has just graduated from college, but life after school isn’t what he hoped for: he’s married, hovering on unemployment, and father to a son named Ralphie who is learning to navigate his own curious distractions. His wife, Gabrielle, calls him out on his irresponsibility, and in response, [Fritz] slips into cannabis-fueled reveries that launch a sequence of wild, incongruent lives. What begins as a private escape spirals into a sprawling, mosaic vision of choices and consequences that test the boundaries between dream and reality.

First life. In this opening thread, [Fritz] meets his Puerto Rican friend Juan, a man who lives with his sister, Chita, in a cramped house. Their conversation about Juan’s sister quickly turns personal, and Chita muses aloud about the cannabis odor. Despite the tension, she capitulates and lights up, drawn in by the same escape hatch Fritz has chosen. The moment deepens as the drug heightens sensation, and the two share a charged encounter under the gaze of a pair of crows perched outside the window, who are poised to rob the house but choose to watch the scene unfold instead. The intimacy is abruptly interrupted when Chita’s father bursts in and shoots Fritz, a violent turn that sends the crows fleeing and marks the first brutal note in this kaleidoscopic journey.

Second life. The next frame follows Fritz into a surreal encounter with a drunken bum who proclaims himself to be God, a jarring contrast to the ordinary grievances of his first life and hinting at the grander, more cynical scale of the visions to come.

Third life. The mood shifts again as Fritz becomes a soldier in Nazi Germany. Captured during a ménage à trois with a commanding officer’s wife and daughter, he escapes and ends up serving as an orderly to Adolf Hitler. In a startling turn, Fritz adopts the guise of a therapist and begins to analyze Hitler, suggesting that his world-dominating ambitions were driven by a desperate need for attention. In the showers, a dangerous moment escalates, and Hitler attempts to rape him, only for Fritz to survive a brutal confrontation that ends when a single testicle is blown off. Fritz is ultimately killed by an American tanker, a grim pivot in his sprawling odyssey.

Fourth life. The fourth chapter finds Fritz attempting to hawk a used condom to a liquor-store owner named Niki. Their conversation reveals that Fritz’s sexual history has left a mark on Niki’s life as well, as Niki’s wife has contracted gonorrhea from Fritz in a past encounter. The scene shifts quickly, and Fritz remarks, with a rueful bravado, about his glory days as a sexual “stud” in the 1930s, a memory that underscores the debauchery threading through these episodes.

Fifth life. A rapid, psychedelic montage follows—old stock footage and animation collide to illustrate Fritz’s fall from grace in the 1930s, a period of excess and dissolution that seems to erase boundaries between history and his own deteriorating self.

Sixth life. Fritz’s gambit with welfare cash takes an absurd turn when he visits Morris, a Jewish pawnshop owner who is literally a toad. Fritz proposes a deal: if Morris will cash the welfare check, Fritz will trade him a toilet seat. Morris initially refuses, but a sudden diarrhea attack (triggered by pickle-induced stomach upset) pushes him to accept a trade. The payoff is not cash but a space helmet, and Fritz’ dream of conquest survives only as a fantasy.

Seventh life. The space-age fantasy then unfolds: Fritz envisions himself as a NASA astronaut preparing for a mission to Mars. An interview with journalists leads to an odd choice—Fritz invites a crow reporter into the space shuttle to share a private moment, and the mission lifts off far earlier than planned, only to fracture and explode in space.

Eighth life. In a bleak, far-future turn, Fritz encounters the ghost of his deceased friend Duke. The world he navigates grows stranger still as Henry Kissinger appears as a rat and becomes president, granting independence to New Jersey, which is renamed “New Africa.” Fritz works as a courier and is tasked with delivering a letter to the president of this imagined nation. In the Black House, the vice president assassinates the president and frames Fritz for the crime, triggering a war between America and New Africa. Kissinger surrenders unconditionally, and Fritz is executed, another brutal reminder of how this multilayered dream critiques power and fate.

Final life. The last sequence sinks Fritz into the sewers of New York, where he meets an Indian guru and Lucifer himself—a purple cat with wings, horns, and a devilish tail—an emblem of the deepest temptations and fears that haunt his psyche. It’s only when Gabrielle interrupts this vision that Fritz is pulled back to reality. She shouts him back to the present, ultimately tossing him out of the apartment to begin repairing their fractured family. After a rapid survey of all the lives he has lived, Fritz recognizes that this final, ordinary life may be the hardest to salvage—yet it is the one that offers a chance to rethink his responsibilities as a father and husband.

Reflections through all these vignettes reveal a single throughline: a man oscillating between escape and accountability, between the memory of his better days and the consequences of his choices. The film uses a mosaic of eras, styles, and bodies to question how much our imagined selves shape the paths we actually walk, and whether a single life of restraint can outshine a dozen lives spent chasing desire, power, and illusion. And through Fritz’s ordeal, the narrative invites viewers to contemplate what it means to grow up, to own one’s mistakes, and to seek redemption within the pressures of family life.